Aude Oliva
Aude Oliva is famous for a certain definition of famous (very well known within her field). It's probably fair to say that if I were a better scientist than I am, I would like to be more like her (and let's hope that one day, I will be a better scientist than I am now).

Aude Oliva's work combines elements of creativity, psychology, and computation, while at the same time not losing track of the larger picture.



While her work and the work of her lab at MIT does relate to the area of research I studied at Bucknell (contrast and spatial frequency in visual perception), it is not merely her contribution to the area that I find impressive. I am also impressed by the way that her research, which is mathematically complex at times, is nonetheless clear and comprehensible to those outside of her field, and possibly to those outside of academia entirely. This is reflected in the wide range of venues that she and her lab have published in. These range from Siggraph to Cognitive Psychology.

She writes:
Ultimately, the results of characterizing human perceptual and cognitive abilities and limitations in a natural setting holds promise for inspiring the next generation of artificial vision systems, interactive visual displays but also gives invaluable insights for the understanding of visual and cognitive disorders. Our research programs bring together disciplines such as perceptual science, cognitive neuroscience, photography, architecture, interior design, image processing and computer graphics.



If the purview of a scientist is to combine different areas of knowledge in order to better understand all of them, then I would say that Aude Oliva has succeeded. Too often, I think, research becomes embroiled in the details of a particular problem and fails to relate it back to the overall picture. The details are important, as are small differences. However, the startling differences, visible to the naked eye, are more interesting, if you can find them.